SEVEN NOISES

There are EPs that call for a proper release apart from the download thing and the CDR. Married in Berdichev's Readying is one of those. Brittany Gould is a visual artist and a member of Denver's Caldera Lakes and Married in Berdichev is her solo project. On her last EP that you can download here she creates ambient layers of different noises, cold and atmospheric sounds close to nature (wind, water,...)as a rhythmless High Places and Visions of Trees or a looped based Cranes, and sets the time of preparation for the Winter to come. Wait is the opening track, not the best not the worst, but I truly recommend to hear the EP as a whole as there's nothing you can miss, from Wait to Light in a Dark Place. She also has planned a whole LP on Fire Talk sometime soon.

Beach Fossils' first album came out on Captured Tracks at the same time as Wild Nothing's fact that made eclipse a bit its impact as all the media and people attention focused on the beauty of Gemini (anyway, much deserved) but massively ignored the great melodies that also existed along that record. Some months later, Beach Fossils are back with a new single that, definitely, are not extra tracks from the album's sessions, but two new songs recorded later as the sound differs, being more crystalline and clean. The two songs, Face It and Distance are among their best tracks yet and, ironically, the closest they've been to Wild Nothing's sound (for a moment I thought I was hearing one of his songs) but still with their own personality.
The single will come out next month on Captured Tracks.
and they'll soon on tour around Europe.

Warpaint have been in raising fame since the release of their first EP Exquisite Corpse, even more since it was re-released by Manimal Vinyl. Then it was announced their first record, The Fool, will be released by Rough Trade and even more buzz was created. This is going to happen in a month an meanwhile you can already download its first single Undertow in many websites like here. But now we are focusing in this split 7' that is an advance of what looks like it's going to be an amazing David Bowie tribute album called Repetition out as a download compilation and soon available physically on Manimal as well (the same people who brought us the The Cure tribute last year). The record will include renditions from the likes of Vivian Girls, MGMT, Lewis & Clarke or even Duran Duran and Carla Bruni apart from the two songs on this single. All the money is going to be for War Child so yet another excuse to get it. Meanwhile you can enjoy these two covers already out as a 7".

The B side of this single, or the AA side, it's already been online for a year without ever been released in any physical format. It had to be Transparent then who decided releasing this song that got much attention for this band when Force Majeure put up this song available for download although, as it took a year to do it so, the song ended up letting have Watch the Glow, their new song, a main role. For those who didn't hear the song at the time, it's a tropical balearic Sweddish dance pop cover of The Sapphires, and it's been the only song available for listening at their Myspace for ages until this new single was announced. Now, we can also enjoy Watch the Glow, their first original song that proves that they cannot only perform but also compose as it's as catchy or even more as their previous attempt.
We can see them live in a couple of months in London at White Heat.

Games are a parallel project of Joel Ford and Dan Lopatin out of Oneohtrix Point Never, quite famous since releasing the Returnal single with the Antony and Fennesz collaborations. Games, as a main difference between OPN, are less ethereal and more upbeat, building their songs out of pieces of samples matched together and voice loops deconstructed and constructed again until they get a new structure. Both tracks of this single, that got physical release this month although the two songs have been online since before Summer (I actually had it back in March), don't offer anything new or a break through, but are simple and short at the same time they are elaborated and fresh. The collage could have been extended with repetition of some the parts but they chose to express their ideas in less than 3 minutes per track, exposing everything they wanted to say in these chill and soulful miniatures as if less was more.
Get the single here, where you can also pre-order their new 12" That We Can Play that they have planned to release in November.

Everything Is Working by Games

Between my busy schedule and the fact that my upload management website stopped working until further notice and I've tried to find a new one to use meanwhile without succeeding I'm not been posting as frequently as I normally do. Let's hope things go back to how the use to and I can continue annoying you with my recommendations.
Anyway, this is a post to celebrate the second single from London's duo Summer Camp, Round the Moon, this time mainly sung by the masculine half. This is also the second single to come out from the recently published Young EP, a collection of 6 songs that also includes their best known track Ghost Train, although the B side, It's Summer, as the first single B side Montgomery Avenue 1984, would remain exclusive to this single, so no excuse for not getting it.

In other news, the band are playing some UK gigs next month which is probably their first ever tour.

Action Biker is the one-woman band project of Swedish Sarah Nyberg who released her last record called as this single and of course also including this song back in 2008. Last month she released the main track of the album as a single including the new song Tears With You Tears Without as its B side. The songs apply a minimalistic use of electronics and are as close as the Swedish Pop way of perpetuating music as it is to acts like Stereolab or Broadcast, always taking into account it's the music made and performed by only one person. All together a delicate and elegant production with a sweet voice it's hard not to enjoy. The single is out on Destination Pop, a new German label that will be totally dedicated to vinyl and which second release, a single by Billy MacKenzie is also out at the time you are reading this.

Crystal Stilts are back with a new single and album after some months of silence. The new single will be out on October 26 via Slumberland and the A side, Shake The Shackles, will form part of the new album out early next year and still untitled. The B side, Magnetic Moon, will only be available on this single.

The two songs on the record are classic Crystal Stilts tunes although the A side is quite long for what they had us used to trespassing the 4 minutes. Check it out here while you wait for the physical copy.

The new and third release at Fort Lowell Records it's another 7 inch limited to 500 copies, this time being a split single between Los Angeles pop quartet Wet & Reckless and Tucson's Tracy Shedd. It's also the first time they put out a band that's not from Tucson and it's their most feminine single to date.
On the A side, Wet & Reckless sing about a New Guy while the music has a retro Beach Boys feeling on the edge of many girls bands nowadays but with their own personality.
Tracy Shedd's Tear it Up is a more melancholic and slow number, sweet with the mandolin arrangements.
This single is presented as if it was an imaginary study of the myriad approaches to singing about boys, as it is mentioned on the press sheet, and is a good introduction to the sound of both bands. The two tracks on the record have been mastered by legendary producer Kramer (Low, Galaxy 500).
It's also my favourite Fort Lowell Records release to date and it will be out in October 5. Pre-order it here.

Painted Face is the alter ego of Allie Alvarado, a D.C. based singer and songwriter who has roots in the Brooklyn art rock scene. Formerly a member of the bands Telepathe and Blood Lines, Allie’s solo project is a collaboration with dance music producer Alvin Risk. Although not too far from the style of Telepathe she's now slightly closer to an upbeat dance version of Bat For Lashes, sharing the same kind of mysterious voice and atmosphere but much more dance floor oriented. Not date announced for any release yet (although she mentions the possibility of an EP in the next couple of months on her Facebook page), but her song Undreamt is shouting for a single release as it has all the ingredients of one of this underground songs that surpasses the frontiers to become a minor hit.

You can also check another song on her Myspace and Bandcamp pages.

The English Premiership is the project of Mike Contast-Isaac from London/Peterborough, Ontario Canada. He's released his second album called Affects back in June full of guitar ambient experimental tunes inspired by the likes of Belong, Fennesz, Tim Hecker or Ben Frost and is a beautiful and highly recommendable collection of dreamy tracks to listen on your headphones on a cold night on the way home.
You can listen to the whole album on his bandcamp here or if you'd like a physical copy you can ask for one here.
Listen to the first track of the album, A Special Kind, down here.

This post comes too late to be news but my busy schedule lately has impeded me from working on the blog as much as I would like. Anyway, Antony is back and we couldn't be more happy as it looks is going to be a busy time for him now that we are approaching the last quarter of the year. Apart from a new album coming next month he has a new EP out tomorrow and a beautiful collaboration that was out on a 7" single last Monday. The song with Oneohtrix Point Never was granted as a best new track on Pitchfork a couple of weeks ago which means that everybody must have heard it by now. This song, together with a Fennesz remix on the other side, is one of the most beautiful songs I've heard lately, with Antony reaching the performing status and expressionism that only people like Nina Simone or Billie Holiday had reached before, and has put again the eyes on Mego, a label everybody seemed to have forgot about after getting a lot of attention at the beginning of the noughties.

The other release we mentioned is the pre-album EP with the Johnsons Thank You For Your Love where Antony seems he's finally seen the light and is oozing optimism through every pore. From the opening track to the John Lennon cover Antony seems he's found love and happiness; Thank You For Your Love sounds like a Broadway opening number or one of those songs they prepare specially for a rendition tribute in Las Vegas to greet the public. You Are The Treasure seems like another gratitude song, like the answer to his Hope There's Someone once he's found this someone. And the closing track, John Lennon's Imagine, it's probably the worst choice for a cover version ever, as it's a song that has got old horribly bad, it's been over-played over the years and I don't think there's anyone there that wants to hear it again but, of course, Antony, makes us change our mind re-interpreting the song until making it his own song, making you forget the original for a moment.
Antony did it again and I can't wait for the new album.

My friend Emily Reo sent me last week her collaboration with Truman Peyote to be released as a split single together with Attached Hands soon on Post Records. After her holiday / tour in Europe with Philip Seymour Hoffman (the music project of Noah, not the actor) she's back 100% into music as this is not the only release / collaboration she has planned. There's another surprising upbeat retro-techno pop collaboration with Craft Spells (who has two 7" singles and a LP planned on Captured Tracks later this year) on a Salad Fork compilation you can download for free here. Both songs are quite far stylistically of what she's done by herself but this is what a collaboration is about, exploding new territories and finding new ways of expression and when they are as contagiously good as these two, they are more than welcome. More news to come soon.

I read some comparisons with Burial when trying to find out more information about Holy Other. Not quite sure about that although some of the samples used can remind the type of dark and manipulated voices he uses. Holy Other's music is a bit more spacey and less beat base, quite more atmospheric and closer to ambient, and it can also be more shinny and slightly positive for some moments. It always seems is about to explode in an orgy of multiple beats but it mainly stays self-restrained, something like the Mogwai of Come On Die Young but after listening to dubstep and Salem for some fortnights.